Dissonance
by cryptictac
Summary: Hurting Cuddy was the only way House knew how to get close to her. House/Cuddy. Explicit content.


**Dissonance**  
by Ticcy

House stumbled through the front door with Cuddy in his arms. Kicking it shut behind him, it slammed closed against the force of him shoving her up against it, his mouth a mere breath away from hers and their noses squashed together. "So," he murmured.

Cuddy squirmed against him and turned her head away, to the side. "You're drunk."

She didn't sound happy about that fact. She sounded downright aggravated, if not tense. He didn't care. "So?" he said again, breathing against the side of her neck this time. He inhaled deeply as he sloppily kissed it, smelling soap and perfume and _Cuddy_. All those smells mingled in the smell of his bourbon-soaked breath. With one hand braced against the door for balance, he slid his other hand onto her belly and crept it up under jacket to her breast. "I want you."

"House," she warned.

He dragged his drunken smirk up the length of her throat. "Cuddy," he mimicked.

"You're drunk," she repeated, like that was supposed to mean something to him.

And, oh, it _did_ mean something to him. He wasn't supposed to be doing this with her. He wasn't supposed to be pushing boundaries like this when he had no right to be pushing them, not now. But nothing mattered when he was drunk. Cuddy wasn't supposed to matter, either. He was drunk enough that he could almost believe it, too. Almost.

"House, don't do this," she said quietly.

"Don't do what?"

"This."

He ignored her. Breast cupped in his hand, he squeezed it through her shirt, running his tongue along her neck up to her jaw. He'd called Cuddy to come and pick his drunk, sorry ass up from the bar because Wilson wasn't answering his cell phone and he didn't have enough money on him to call a cab. He hadn't _wanted_ to phone her. Somewhere in his booze-addled brain, he knew calling her would be a bad idea. Still, his fingers had fumbled with the speed dial on his cell phone and slapped it to his ear. Cuddy hadn't sounded pleased to hear him on the phone at close to midnight, breathing into the phone that he needed a ride and he didn't just mean the automobile kind. She'd called him a pig and hung up. He'd known - somehow - that she hadn't hung up for good. So, he'd waited. Five minutes later, his phone had rang and when he'd answered, Cuddy was on the other end, saying in a crisp tone that she'd be there to get him in ten minutes, that he'd better be ready and had better _not_ vomit in her car. And now, here he was.

He ignored the way Cuddy was trying to shove him back with her hands pressed to his chest, and focused on just tasting as much of her as he could get his mouth on. He slid his hands back down her body to her hips and surged himself against her while his mouth found hers. He kissed her hard while she bit at his mouth angrily. "I didn't bring you home for this," she hissed.

"Then why did you?"

"Because you're pathetic. Because you would be stupid enough to drive yourself home if I hadn't agreed to meet you."

He moved a hand down around to her ass and he groped it with a firm squeeze. "So?"

"_So_." She bit at his mouth again, hard enough to startle him slightly. "I'm not letting you use me. Not again."

One of his hands was creeping back up to her breast again. "You wouldn't have agreed to pick me up if you didn't like being used."

His mouth was back down by her throat and he felt it flex against his lips as she swallowed thickly. "You're a real bastard, you know that?"

"And you're a bitch," he replied, to provoke her more than because he believed his words. "That makes us even."

"I hate you," she said icily.

He started to push his hand up under her shirt. He tried to ignore the sting of her words. "No, you don't."

He heard her gasp and it wasn't as angry as she probably meant it to sound. He pulled back from her neck and shoved her shirt up roughly over her breasts, and he leaned down and claimed a nipple in his mouth. He heard her gasp again and this time her fingers slid into his hair. He sucked her nipple through the material of her bra, feeling her nails clawing across his scalp. "Screw you," she panted softly.

"I knew you'd come around eventually."

He tugged the bra cup down with his thumb so her breast spilled out and he latched back onto her nipple, which had swirled and hardened. He heard her groan this time, a needy sound, punctuated with Cuddy crushing her pelvis up against his. "God, don't stop," she breathed, tugging his face closer to her chest. He obeyed, using his tongue and teeth to torture her nipple until she was breathing hard and desperately.

He pulled back and everything became a flurry of clothes being shed and mouths kissing with an animalistic ferocity. Within minutes, Cuddy was stripped down to just her panties, tearing his jeans undone. They stumbled through his apartment, crashing into furniture and staggering into his darkened bedroom with hands grabbing at each other in all the places they could reach. The moment the backs of her knees hit the bed, she flopped to the mattress and pulled him with her. He crawled over her and attacked her breasts with his lips, groaning deep in her mouth when she palmed his erection in her hand. He fumbled with her panties, ripping them down to her knees before she was guiding him into her.

It was a clumsy struggle, her legs trapped by her underwear and his body uncoordinated from the alcohol swilling in his veins. The bed creaked under their shifting weight, the bed sheets rumpled beneath their bodies and House grunted with his mouth crushed to hers as his hand joined hers in a clumsy attempt to help enter her. He slid in, tight and hot and wet, and he gasped at the same time that she softly cried out, the rhythm of their bodies moving together immediately fast and frantic.

Her arms enveloped him and her hands were everywhere. All over his back, in his hair, grasping his head, his shoulders. "House," she whimpered almost inaudibly, her voice broken and full of longing.

Through the disorientation of drunkenness, his chest tightened. For Cuddy. For what he'd once had with her and had now lost. _God, Cuddy_, he was thinking. _God, god, god_. He struggled to push deeper inside her, her hands slapping onto his ass to help drive him into her. A ripping sound split the air, the elastic on her panties tearing under the strain of Cuddy trying to spread her legs wider.

Being drunk gave him close to no control over his body. He came before she did, panting helplessly into the side of her neck while he orgasmed deep inside her. "Sorry," he mumbled when he came back to his senses enough to be able to speak. "Sorry."

"Shut up." Cuddy grabbed the back of his head with one hand and reached her other hand between them. She started to stroke herself. "Keep moving."

House did as he was told, though the sensitivity of having orgasmed made it almost painfully uncomfortable. But he kept moving. With his face buried against neck, he thrust as fast as he could, trying to will his penis to stay hard enough until she came. Another ripping sound came from her panties. Her breath was coming in sharper pants, her hand driving at a frantic pace between their bodies. "Oh," she called out, arching beneath him. He pulled back just enough to look down at her. Her head was pressed back into the pillow, her mouth open wide and eyes clamped shut. "_Oh_."

She hunched up from the pillow with an orgasmic cry. As she flopped back, he claimed her mouth and kissed her hard while she pulled her hand free from between their bodies. She grasped his head and forced him deeper into the kiss, enough to make his lips feel bruised and his lungs to hurt from lack of air. He broke away with a gasp, then resumed the kiss almost straight away. _I'm sorry_, he wanted to say. _I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I love you_.

He was sorry, too - he was sorry for every cruel thing he'd ever said to her, every nasty thing he'd done to drive her away from him. He could never bring himself to say he was sorry, though, and he couldn't do it now, either. Kissing her like his life depended on it was all he had left. The guilt of knowing he'd been the one to ruin them was sobering, like a dash of icy cold water. Tangled all up in Cuddy with her skin under his and her hands gripping onto him in ways that spoke volumes of how much she missed him, he didn't want to pull back or let her go. _I'm sorry, I'm sorry,_ he kept thinking. _Tell me you forgive me_.

Cuddy was the one who ended the kiss. He resisted as she pushed him back and turned her head away. He tried to chase her mouth with his, only to be shoved back even harder. "Get off."

"I just did." A bad joke; he was stalling for time. Anything to stay close for just one more second.

"House."

His penis was soft now; it slipped out of her as he pulled away reluctantly and rolled off, his penis trailing a wet line of semen mixed with her fluids across her inner thigh. Then silence. Just the sound of their breathing, heavy and out of sync. His body was buzzing with aftershocks, but it felt empty. He was definitely sober now. Sober and aware of all the guilt. Guilt for all the hurt he'd caused Cuddy. Guilt for what had just happened. Guilt that, yes, he'd used her. Yet again. Anything to get close to her, even if it meant hurting her. It was the only way he knew how to get close to her at all these days. It was the only way he'd ever really known how to get close to her, to reassure himself that she cared about him. The day she stopped being hurt by him was the day she stopped caring, stopped loving him. At least if he was able to still hurt Cuddy, that meant he still mattered to her. Even though he hated himself every time he saw the devastated look of hurt on her face.

"I don't hate you," Cuddy's voice, quiet and strangely hollow, broke the silence.

He was silent for a moment. "You should."

"I know."

He stared up at the ceiling, at the beams of moonlight cutting across it. He licked his lips and opened his mouth. I'm sorry, he thought to say. I never meant for us to end up like this. He held his breath. Then he swallowed, swallowing the words with it. And then it was too late to say anything - the bed shifted as Cuddy reached down for her panties and pulled them back up her thighs and over her hips. She was going to leave and he wasn't going to stop her, as much as he wanted so very badly for her to stay. He suddenly wished he hadn't sobered, that he was still too drunk to be able to see. He wished he hadn't phoned Cuddy. He wished she'd hung up on him the first time and never called back. Once again, he was regretting every move he made. Why did everything always have to end up being about regret? Regret and pain and loneliness.

"I'm sorry, House," she said once she'd gathered her clothes and was standing by the door.

He brusquely shook his head. He didn't want to hear it. He didn't want her to speak. Better she leave with everything unsaid than leave with her words hanging thick in the air and in his mind like fog that couldn't be lifted. "Just go."

Despite himself, he dared himself to look at her and saw she was staring right back at him, clutching her clothes against her naked chest. She looked so vulnerable, standing there like that. "I want to hate you," she said quietly. "It would be so much easier if I could."

"Cuddy--"

"Do you really think we were a mistake? Is that what you really think of me?"

"Just go," he repeated, sharply this time.

She drew in a quick breath and he saw the tendons in her throat flex and twitch nervously. Her lips parted in the gesture of wanting to say more. But then she nodded, pressing her lips back together in a thin, trembling line, and turned. He watched her naked back as she retreated from the room and listened to the sounds of her shuffling about in the living room while she dressed. A few minutes later, he heard the sound of the front door creaking open and then closing quietly.

**end**


End file.
